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The Rural Voice, 1978-02, Page 5Clif f is back After a dozen years in the city, Cliff Robb finds western Ontario a good place to come `home' to. After a dozen years fighting the bureaucracy of C.B.C. in Toronto. Cliff Robb is back in CKNX and local farm broadcasting seems to be undergoing a renaissance. Cliff was with CKNX in the early sixties when the station was renowned for its topnotch farm coverage. That coverage had been built up by people like Bob Carbert. Roger Swass and Vaughan Douglas when Robb came to the station in 1963. In his three year term at the Wingham station he had attempted to put more human interest into his farm programming. both on radio and television. Facts and figures were still a necessary part of the programming. but he wanted to make the news more interesting. He tried to find more humour to add to the news. Looking back. he recalls. those were the happiest years of his life. He was brimming with new ideas and the ideas found .acceptance. His family was happy living in western Ontario. But the lure of the big-time was strong and so after three years he moved on to C.B.C. in Toronto where he became a producer of farm radio shoe: s. His ideas proved successful there too. He asked for a Sunday morning timeslot from 7 to 9 p.m. Others laughed at him because that time was traditionally the dog time of the ‘...eek. But he put together a farm information package. with the help of a good staff that within six months built an audience of more than 200.000 people. That the audience was specifically listening to this show was proven by the fact that the audience for the show that started at 9 dropped to only 40.000. But failing health, and 10 years of battling to stay afloat in C.B.C's notorious political infighting, took its toll. Two years atter joining C.B.C. he suffered a stroke but he recovered. Later. he had to" have a hip joint replaced with an artificial joint. But infection set in and the complications sapped him of his energy and when the political backbiting started reducing the effectiveness of his staff and cutting his budgets. he decided he'd had enough. He quit. He looked longingly first to eastern Ontario. He'd been born there on a farm near Kingston. His father was a writer and a poet v: ho owned a farm but had a manager run it. while he wrote books championing the cause of the North American Indian and contributed articles to such publications as Canadian Countryman. Reversing the normal trend, however, Cliff the poet's son was more interested in farming and spent a lot of time with the men on the farm. He joined a calf club at the earliest possible age and picked up a lot of knowledge about farming from his experience on the farm and talking with his neighbours. He picked up another kind of knowledge when he went to war, a knowledge of man's inhumanity to man. When he came home, he wanted, like so many other veterans, to return to the land. He bought the farm from his father, who continued to live on the farm. He married a girl from Kingston and they had two children (one of whom, David, now lives in Seaforth where he works for a weekly newspaper). He farmed for 10 years. He was good with dairy cattle and always made money on them, he recalls, but he was a disorganized sort and it caused problems. He'd be so preoccupied doing other things that he'd not get his crops off, and other such things. As with many, many other farmers, the crunch came in the 1950's when the financial pressure became too much (Cliff notes that after the war farmers made up 20 per cent of the entire population while today they make up only five per cent). He went down. he remembers, to talk to an older farmer friend and over a' beer in the milkhouse poured out his story. The farmer, when asked for advice, said if he were in the same position, he'd sell out fast. Things were going to get worse and worse for farmers he predicted. He was too old to get out himself, he said, but Cliff vas young and had a family and should get while the getting was good. He further discussed the problem with his father who told him that he had the gift of gab and could write fairly well so why not try to convince one of the two local radio stations, neither of which had any farm broadcasting at the time, to give him a job. He took the suggestion and submitted some samples for things THE RURAL VOICE/FEBRUARY 1978, PG. 5.